Always You
by TheNightmirage
Summary: Small vignettes from a romance an apocalypse almost denied. Louis/Zoey. Ongoing.
1. Outbreak

Sometime between when they'd entered Mercy Hospital and the elevator ride to the roof, it had started to rain. Louis kept a firm grip on the nearby column as he looked cautiously over the edge of the roof. To say it was a long way down seemed an understatement: in fact, between the haze of the rain and the sheer height of 28 stories Louis could not see the ground at all.

Out of his peripheral vision he saw Zoey come and stand next to him. She extended a wary hand out into the rain, clinging to his arm with her other hand. They both watched the raindrops sprinkle onto her exposed wrist and fingers and were simultaneously reminded that this situation was really happening.

"Weird to think this is where it all started," Louis said. "It's almost peaceful up here."


	2. Blood

It seemed to happen in slow motion. The Tank reached out and grabbed the cornered Zoey who was still futilely unloading round after round of her M1911 pistols into its face. Then, with a roar of rage, it flung her clear across the room. She hit her hip hard on the meeting table in the middle of the conference room before she collided audibly with the opposite wall.

Francis swore repeatedly before delivering four successive shotgun blasts to the Tank's face. The beast gurgled feebly as it collapsed face-first onto the debris-strewn floor.

Louis was by her side in a second. She lay twisted in a motionless heap; a trickle of blood ran down from her hairline and stained her temple a delicate shade of pink. He gingerly untangled her legs and propped her head in the crook of his elbow.

"C'mon, Zoey, wake up! Don't you die on me!"

She stirred listlessly in his arms for a moment before her eyes flickered open. He had never been so glad to see her green eyes.

"I knew you wouldn't leave me," she whispered.


	3. Soda Pop

It was with a bubbly joy that Louis had never seen in her that Zoey took up their shift of the watch with him.

"What's up?" he asked.

"I'll show you in a minute," she replied, grinning.

Bill propped himself up against the safehouse wall, pulled his hat down over his eyes and almost immediately nodded off. Francis, however, seemed content to take his time. It took him three readjustments of his vest (which he had taken off to use as a pillow), several different sleeping positions and at least ten irritated "hmph"s before he finally nodded off.

Smiling gleefully, Zoey practically dove into the backpack of the group's supplies. They alternated carrying it with them: today it had been her turn. She rummaged around a bit before she finally extracted a bottle of Coca-Cola.

"Where did you get that?" Louis asked, scooting toward her with interest.

"Remember earlier when I ducked into that side room back near the greenhouse?"

"And Bill flipped a shit when he couldn't find you? Yeah, how could I forget?"

"Well, it's because I saw this. I wanted to save it to share with you for our watch. I'm always okay with a caffeine boost."

She twisted the top off, muffling the hiss of escaping carbonation into her pink jacket, and took a long sip.

"This is the best Coke I've ever had. No joke," she told him, handing the bottle over and wiping her mouth off with her sleeve.

She was right. And within fifteen minutes, the soda was gone; they were both jittery from the caffeine rush and spent the four hours of their watch cracking jokes about polar bears.


	4. Angels

"Do you believe in an afterlife, Louis?"

He looked up from his assault rifle magazine that he had been half-heartedly cleaning out before they set off into the heart of Riverside.

"I do," he told the nineteen year old who was staring forlornly out the upstairs window into the graveyard they'd just passed through. The mangled corpse of a Smoker who had, only moments before, been a coherent (albeit insane) human being who denied them entry into the safehouse lay just feet from her. She kept throwing uncomfortable glances at the body before returning her gaze to the graveyard.

"Like a heaven and hell kind of thing?" Francis opened his mouth to make a smart-ass remark, but Bill silenced him with a swat to the back of the head and a threatening glare.

"No, not really," Louis told her, understanding the need for reassurance in a time like this. She had delivered the fatal shot to the Smoker on the floor-a clean rifle round through the head. "But I do think we go somewhere after we die…somewhere good." He hoped his mother was there now.

"What about angels? Do you believe in them?"

Louis rose to his feet and joined her at the window. The church's spotlight highlighted the statue of a weeping angel, bent low over a grave covered in a tangle of roots.

"I believe that you're a good person, Zoey."

She nodded, biting her lip hard and closing her eyes. Her breath hitched as she inhaled sharply. A single tear escaped her shut eyelids and ran down her pretty face. Louis wanted desperately to wipe it away. Instead, he laid a hand on her shoulder. She grabbed onto his index finger and squeezed it.

"I'm okay," she said. "I'm okay. Come on, I bet I can kill more zombies than you."

"Oh, pssh, please," Louis retorted, glad to see Zoey return to her normal demeanor.

He let her get the first three Infected they spotted, regardless.


	5. Panting

Zoey's father had always told her that she was an apt observer. She knew that she certainly had a tendency to notice small details others did not. Her father wanted her to use this skill in the law-enforcement field. Before the apocalypse, Zoey had mostly used it to find hidden Easter eggs in video games.

Now, as she trudged across over the failed barricade into Riverside, she felt as though her senses had been on a constant high for the past two weeks. She was usually the first to hear the creak of a floorboard or the distant rumble that announced the imminent arrival of a horde or a Tank.

It was eerily quiet as she helped Bill drop down from the ledge of the old movie theater they'd been skirting along. A ferocious battle ended not two minutes ago; a battle they had started by knocking down the barricade and apparently alerting half the Infected population of the town.

Her senses, still on their state of heightened awareness, searched for something to concentrate on in the silence. Everything sounded unnatural: where was the roar of Infected? Where was the sobbing of a Witch or the _pop-pop-pop _of their firearms?

With nothing else to go on, her mind began to concentrate on her three companions' breaths as they traversed across a street strewn with abandoned cars. It was the only sound to fill the silence.

Bill was a wheezer: his breath came in sharp, little whistles. She knew his knee must be bothering him again, but the stubborn veteran would never admit it. She considered offering him her pain pills but decided against it when she realized he wouldn't take them unless he was bleeding out.

Francis huffed as he walked: his breathing gruff and low just like his voice. He sounded a little like her father did when he came back from his early evening jogs, only with heavier breaths. She was reminded of home for a few seconds and was unsure whether to laugh or weep.

Louis, who brought up the rear of the group, seemed the most innocuous of the three men. His breathing, though quicker and sharper with their brisk pace, did not cut so deeply into the silence as Bill's wheezing and Francis's huffing. His was the most calming, as was his very presence.

She found that, like most things about Louis, she liked his the best.


	6. Cracked Mirror

"Stop!" Zoey hissed in a frantic whisper, throwing out her arm to halt the others. Francis, still focused on the rooftops they had just emerged off of into the office building, ran into her and nearly knocked her over. Despite the gravity of their current situation, they were both forced to bite back laughter.

"What?" Bill demanded.

"_Listen_!" she insisted.

They did, and in the silence that fell all four of them heard the tell-tale heavy huffing and puffing from the room just on the other side of them: a Tank.

"What've you got left?" Louis whispered, pointing to his assault rifle. "I'm pretty low on ammo."

"Me too," Zoey said. "I've got maybe ten rounds left for the rifle, and I want to save that for sniping."

Francis pulled a measly six shotgun rounds from the inside of his vest as Bill shook his head sadly to indicate he too was low on ammunition.

"It's a straight shot through these buildings," Louis told them. "We're not going to get around it unless we go back down to the street and take the long way."

"No," insisted Bill. "There's a barricaded shelter not far up ahead. With any luck, there's ammo in there. We wouldn't make it through the street with just this left. I'll cause a diversion."

"With what?" asked Francis, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

"One of these," Bill said, stepping back over to where they'd climbed in through the window and picking up a loose slat of rooftop. "You three need to step into those alcoves, and I'll throw this back out onto the roof."

"That'll put us in plain sight!" Louis said, a little too loudly. His three companions shushed him frantically.

"If the Tank doesn't turn around and just goes straight out onto the roof it won't. While it's out there investigating we can sneak into the next room and get the hell out of this building," Bill explained. "I know it's a long shot," he added, seeing the look on Louis' face. "But if we move fast and quietly, we should be okay."

Francis ducked into the small alcove on the right-hand side of the room. He realized this was where Bill intended to throw the brick from and swore under his breath at the idea of being squashed into a small space with the old man, but it was too late to move.

Louis backed into the other alcove, and Zoey stepped cautiously in beside him. Unless they got damn close, Louis realized, the sleeve of her pink jacket would be in plain view of the Tank. She seemed to realize this at about the same moment and glanced awkwardly over at him.

"Come here," he whispered. He placed an arm around her waist and pulled her in close to him. In order to keep her balance, Zoey wedged her right foot in between his own. The force of her body squashed so tightly against his caused him to fall backward into the remaining space between him and the wall. Something behind him gave an alarmingly crunch. He'd backed into a mirror.

"Sorry," he told her, feeling bad about the awkwardness of the situation.

"It's fine," she reassured him.

They both saw the brick sail across the room from the opposite alcove and crash through the last intact window. Immediately the Tank was on the hunt, bolting into the room. It seemed unaware that four humans also occupied the area. Unfortunately, it stopped at the window and did not venture out onto the roof to investigate. Instead, it bent down and snuffled around the window, crunching glass under its massive feet.

Immobilized and terrified in the corner, Louis's mind raced and became fixated on a very situation inappropriate fact: Zoey was pressed up against him. He became startlingly aware that his hand rested on her hipbone and his arm encircled her small frame until the crook of his elbow was pressed against the delicate curve of her waist. He sensed his body was about to react to the feel of the small of her back pressed against his abdomen. His mind raced to counteract his body.

_Dead puppies dead puppies dead puppies! _he thought frantically. This _could not_ happen right now. There was a Tank investigating literally fifteen feet from them, and if anything happened she would surely feel it.

At long last, the sounds of some nearby Infected finally prompted the Tank to smash its way through the window and out onto the roof. After a few tense seconds, Bill hissed into the deathly quiet.

"Go go go!"

Zoey broke away almost instantly, and they all darted through the next few rooms not daring to look back. Francis used the butt of his gun to smash in the skulls of the few Infected that loitered near the barricaded door. Completely out of breath, Zoey and Bill slammed the iron bar of the door into its holder as Francis and Louis shoved boxes up against it. After a few seconds, they all seemed to realize the danger had truly passed and started to laugh.

A couple of minutes later, as Louis passed ammunition out to his companions, Zoey spoke up.

"Is your leg okay?"

"What?"

"You backed into that mirror didn't you? Let me see."

He turned and felt her fingers brush the back of his thigh. He desperately thought of dead animals again.

"Looks okay," Zoey told him. "I guess you'll just have seven years of bad luck." She grinned at him.

"Can we count the last two weeks in the seven year total? Because I think all that's gone down since this shit started knocks out about four of those years."

"I'll count it," she said, still grinning.

"Zoey, can you help me with this damn thing?" Bill asked from over in the corner. One of the boxes they had shoved against the barricaded door was balancing precariously, and the old man was futilely trying to steady it himself.

As she went over, Louis realized that he missed the feel of her warm body against him. Part of it was because, yes, she was a beautiful young woman. But it was also because he had not been so close to anyone in weeks. The last hug he'd received had been from his mother, nearly a month ago on his birthday. Suddenly, he felt more alone than he ever had.

Not in his wildest dreams would he have guessed that Zoey felt the same. But she did.


	7. Torn Dress

Ever since their encounter with the military two days ago, Zoey had been having nightmares. They were a blend of the horrors the four of them had encountered at the base: the confirmation that they were all Carriers, the doctor being torn to pieces by Infected, and Bill refusing to stop the train. But most of the events in them were imagined: she'd watched as her subconscious mind played out a variety of gruesome deaths of her three fellow survivors. Tonight it was a new imagined horror, but one that scared her more than any of the others.

She was back at the base; wearing that horrible blue dress she'd been forced to wear to her mother and stepfather's wedding two years ago. She was alone which she had not been for nearly two weeks. The silence felt unnatural and abrasive.

Two men in gas masks entered through a door she hadn't noticed before. She opened her mouth to ask what was going on when they simultaneously launched themselves at her, tearing at her clothes and grabbing parts of her nobody had ever been allowed to touch. The sound of tearing fabric as a ruffle from the terrible dress came free drowned out her screaming.

She instantly became aware of the rocking of the train floor under her, but the feel of hands on her still remained. Half bawling, half screaming she threw an arm over her face and scrambled away from the hands.

"Zoey! Hey! It's me!" It took a few seconds, but her sleepy brain finally matched the voice to Louis. She reached out blindly for him, and her face was suddenly pressed into his shoulder.

"You're on a train to the Keys," he told her, grounding her back in reality. "It's okay. There aren't any zombies here."

"It wasn't zombies," she gasped, trying to catch her breath. "I was back at the base, and some men were trying to…to…"

"That's not going to happen," he reassured her, understanding what she was hinting at. "Nobody is going to do anything to you."

She became aware that Francis was loitering awkwardly nearby and reached out to him with her free hand. He patted her wrist, and she laughed despite the situation.

"You okay now?" Francis asked.

"Yeah, I think," she lied.

"Nothing is going to happen, okay?" Louis said again. "I promise."

And because he was the one to say it, she almost believed it.


	8. Intuition

Louis supposes you never completely outgrow those moments of sudden clarity in realizing your mother had been right all along. As he'd grown older, these moments became fewer and farther in between—he had simply come to expect she was right about pretty much everything.

But even a mother's reassurances seemed to ring hollow when someone he trusted as much as the woman who raised him had betrayed his trust in ten different ways in the span of ten seconds.

"I've been seeing someone else," the woman he'd been preparing to spend the rest of his life with told him. "It isn't fair to any of us for me to go through with this wedding. I'm sorry."

His mother's words of comfort seemed far away and empty that night as he'd cried on her couch, returned diamond ring in one hand and a beer he hadn't touched in the other. After a while she realized he just needed to cry it out for a while, as much as it obviously pained her, so she had thrown a blanket over the both of them and turned on some ridiculous comedy movie he barely paid attention to.

"You're gonna find her someday, Louis," she'd said as he stretched out on the sofa to sleep and she was retreating to her bedroom. "You're gonna find a woman who is strong and brave and smart and it is gonna be when you least expect it."

"Yeah, Mom," he'd replied absently, voice cracked from hours of on and off tears.

Three years later when his mother is gone because most of the entire damn world is gone, Louis glances over at the brown-haired girl propped up on the other side of the safehouse cleaning out her gun after another mad sprint through zombie infested streets. Zoey raises her eyes to meet his gaze and sticks her tongue out at him in a small attempt to bring a little laughter back into the world.

"Damn it, Mom," he mutters.


End file.
